Cultural shift needed in hotel pricing and booking and Duetto wants to lead the movement
Duetto’s concept of “open pricing” is but the first step in a long journey towards helping hotels extend the trust they’ve already built with “customers who sleep in their beds ” to the booking process.Said Patrick Bosworth, CEO and co-founder of Duetto, “According to Google and Comsco [...]
Singapore debates pros and cons of short-term rentals as sharing models lobby to stave off ban
Like everywhere else, Singapore is trying to figure out what to do with the sharing economy or, more specifically, short-term rentals.This week, Airbnb and travelmob sent out emails to their members, encouraging them to take part in a survey being conducted by the URA (Urban Redevelopment Authority) [...]
The Wrap: Chinese online retail spending forecast to reach US$1 trillion by 2019: Forrester
In the news: Forrester’s forecast on China’s online retail spending, MAS’ new rules on e-cigarettes, Trisara Academy’s hospitality internship programme, Travelport’s multi-year agreement with Hutchinson-Priceline Chinese online retail spending forecast to reach US$1 trillion by 2019: Forre [...]
HotelQuickly enters South Korea with redesigned app
In launching its app in South Korea today, its 15th country, last minute booking app HotelQuickly took its time to make sure it got it right in Asia’s most mobile market.CEO Tomas Laboutka said, “We didn’t want to rush to Korea just to be there. We wanted to really learn as much as possible ab [...]
Share your “food-fies” in Accor’s new social media campaign
Accor Hotels has launched a “Savour, Snap, Share” social media campaign across Asia to bring together social media, food and selfies. Hotel guests and anyone interested in this contest can share “food-fies” (selfies with food) of themselves enjoying culinary delights at any Accor property ar [...]
Taking Travel Massive from fun project to serious business
Travel Massive started off as a fun project by serial entrepreneur Ian Cumming who wanted to connect people in travel. Over the years, it’s grown into a global community, powered by local chapters. Now, backed by a personal investment from Stephan Ekbergh of Travelstart, Cumming wants to turn Trav [...]
The Okura Group is TripAdvisor’s new instant booking partner
Leading Japanese hospitality company, Hotel Okura Co Ltd, has entered into a partnership with travel site, TripAdvisor, making it the first Asia-based company to make its hotel inventory available through the latter's instant booking platform.This new platform, which is currently available to U.S. t [...]
How India’s tourism could be increasingly incredible
This is a guest blog by Carolyn Childs, co-founder of MyTravelResearch.com, a market research and marketing firm specialising in the travel, tourism and aviation industries.Since returning from Australia Business Week in India in mid January I've written a lot about how Australia can profit from the [...]
LY.com finds itself in the middle of the OTA melee – and likes where it’s at
This is an article by Aaron Stewart, ChinaTravelNews correspondentLY.com (Chinese name 同程旅游, Tongcheng Lvyou) is a leading Chinese online travel platform that specialises in weekend getaways and local sightseeing tickets. In April 2014, LY received a US$200 million investment from Chinese OT [...]
Emirates to hold Singapore Hackathon in March
Following the success of its travel hackathons in Silicon Valley in 2013 and in Boston in 2014, Emirates, a global connector of people and places, is partnering with WIT (Web In Travel) to run its first hackathon in Singapore during the March 14-15 weekend.The 48-hour event, to be held at 237 @ 237 [...]
